25 More Tips for Writers (26-50)
- To write a good character, you have to imagine that you live in the character’s body and listen for his or her inner voice.
- Ask the character you are inventing what secret he or she most wants to keep. Decide if the story you write will reveal that secret or just inform the characters gestures, responses and decisions.
- In poetry, long lines help the poem gather momentum and short lines slow the poem down, as the reader must pause more often.
- The lyrical values in writing are the places that move us–images seen through the writer’s or characters’ eyes, repeated sounds, sound that conjure the feeling of the time, place and sensory stimulation. Make sure your writing includes lyrical sentences, moments, passages.
- In even the shortest of poems, readers must get a sense that they are in a place and transported and placed back down again.
- The narrative values in writing are very important–can the reader track time and setting?
- Tune your ear to hear where your writing is working by free writing: do daily freewrites for 10-20 minutes, put them away for at least a few days, and then re-read what you wrote (aloud is helpful). Underline a couple of phrases or sentences that leap out at you because of the way they sound. Begin more freewrites using these great sounding words.
- Try writing from beginning to end when you work on something. It is interesting to note what happens when you assign yourself to finish something in one sitting. You can go back later and beef the piece up and even change it, but you will have something satisfying on the page.
- In novel writing, remember to make sure that in the middle and end of the book, background information that could better have come at the opening does not interrupt momentum and action.
- In novel writing, don’t stop dramatic action or dialogue for presenting a flashback. Find a quieter moment for characters to introduce their memories.
- Rather than include background information as exposition, create action, dialogue and the revelation of your characters’ feelings and thoughts in a way that particular information comes into the story naturally.
- When you adhere to a viewpoint, the reader can only know what the character knows or is aware of; the reader receives the scene through the character’s mind and nervous system.
- Readers want conflict: this is how they relate and get hooked.
- A handy character to invent is one who is privy to the main character’s ideas and desires and wants to help the main character in achieving a goal. That way, what might have been inner dialogue can become external dialogue.
- After you have something on the page, ask yourself what makes the story worth telling; try opening with a sentence that asserts your reasons for telling the story. You might find that some of what you have included is distracting or that other parts need some attention to show the value of the story.
- Work with the sense of place; descriptions and inclusions from the setting will help you evoke your characters and story.
- Read good fiction and the reasons why writers consider it good: You’ve Got to Read This edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard provides both short fiction and essays by the authors who consider the particular pieces inspiring.
- Read about work-in-progress to see how revision works. Some good sources are www.writingitreal.com’s Revisions Diary category and The Shape of Poetry by poet Peter Meinke.
- Want to share an author’s experience of “living with” her characters? Read Ursula Hegi’s novel Intrusions.
- Try writing epistolary fiction or poetry–work in the form of letters; letters create an audience’s route into the work because the letters make the readers voyeurs.
- All stories originate from a particular person; the first person singular is therefore the most natural point of view.
- Readers stay hooked by identifying with the dilemmas and obstacles of the character or speaker. Once hooked, they’re more willing to absorb the discoveries and insights.
- Dialogue draws readers close to the characters and action; but dialog should not include repetitions or even too many words. To keep a story moving, dialogue has to sound natural though it is not unshaped like normal speech.
- Character is action: characters express themselves by what they do and say.
- If you are writing about someone from a particular ethnic group, a foreigner or a foreign place, be sure to sprinkle in words and idioms from the language and culture you are writing about. Don’t translate the words so much as help the reader understand them from context.